Author: Praveen Swami
Publication: The Hindu
Date: June 27, 2004
URL: http://www.hindu.com/2004/06/27/stories/2004062705880100.htm
Like most young people her age,
Ishrat Jehan Raza occasionally cruised the internet. If the Gujarat police
are right and the Mumbai college student who was killed in Ahmedabad on
June 15 was a Lashkar-e- Taiba operative, she would most certainly have
seen a graphic image on the organisation's website: riot survivor Qutubuddin
Ansari begging for his life. Underneath the image, the Lashkar's site designer
added a slogan: "don't you think he should have a gun?"
Like most things to do with the
organisation, the Lashkar's plans for Gujarat are no secret. Ever since
the pogrom of 2002, the organisation has been publicly calling on Indian
Muslims to join its Jihad.
In an article published that year
on the Lashkar website, its political head, Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed, asked
"the Muslims of India that they themselves rise up for their protection."
"Only Jihad," he continued, "is
the defence of the oppressed Muslims. The riots have proved that the Hindus
are fully armed but the Muslims are badly ill-equipped to cope with such
a situation."
Almost two weeks after the controversial
encounter that claimed Ishrat's life, along with those of Pune resident
Javed Sheikh and two Pakistani nationals, it is still unclear just what
motivated the young college student to join the ranks of the Lashkar. That
she did so, in at least some peripheral form, seems probable. Evidence
has emerged that Ishrat maintained telephone contact with Javed, and that
codenames entered in her diary match those in a separate register maintained
by her associate.
These codenames, meant to refer
to potential assassination targets, offer at least some clues to her motivation.
Leaders widely believed to be at the cutting edge of anti-Muslim political
mobilisation received particularly venomous nomenclature. Bajrang Dal leader
Vinay Katiyar is referred to as `Kutta,' or dog; Vishwa Hindu Parishad
demagogue Dr. Praveen Togadia as `Tingu,' or dwarf. Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi is coded `Mubarak,' or congratulations - a reference, perhaps,
to the sentiments the Lashkar would pass on to his assassins.
Ishrat's sentiments mirror those
of some youth who were incensed by the Indian state's failure to deliver
justice during or after the violence in Gujarat. Mr. Sayeed's article taps
this anger, arguing that "the only way for the Muslims of India is to organise
their movements [sic.] for liberation. There is no other way out." "Why
to die helplessly?" the Lashkar chief asks. Some have been listening. Since
the Gujarat riots, evidence has emerged that the Lashkar has succeeded
in recruiting several - perhaps dozens - of young people from the State
and elsewhere.
Apart from six men known to have
trained with the Lashkar in Poonch, the investigation into the assassination
of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya threw up a mass of evidence
on recruitment by Islamist groups in Gujarat. Residents of the State working
in West Asia are major targets.
Key figures in such recruitment
include Abdul Bari, a Hyderabad resident last seen in Saudi Arabia operating
under the nom de guerre Abu Hamza. Javed, like several of those involved
in recent terrorist crime, is believed to have been recruited on the second
of two visits to Oman.
It would, however, be facile to
link recent recruitment only to the Gujarat pogrom. Lashkar recruitment
outside Jammu and Kashmir dates back to the immediate aftermath of the
demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, when the organisation won several
recruits.
Ishrat's neighbourhood, the Thane
ghetto of Mumbra, has a strong subterranean tradition of support for the
Lashkar, underpinned by the influence of the local Ahl-e-Hadis seminary
- the sect from which the terrorist groups derives its religious legitimacy.
As early as 2000, four top Lashkar terrorists were arrested in Mumbra,
along with local sympathisers.
Religious organisations such as
the Tabligh-i-Jamaat and the Ahl-e-Hadis have cashed in on the climate
of fear generated by decades of anti-Muslim violence, emphasising communal
separateness. From this ideological foundation, violence is for some just
a small step away.
